Susan’s Notes
By Susan Palmes-Dennis
ROCKINGHAM, North Carolina—It was nearly a month ago when I saw a video of interim manager Fermin Jarales standing outside the office of the Cagayan de Oro City Water District (COWD) in the rain after being refused entry by the security guards.
This was after then COWD general manager Engr. Antonio Young and several incumbent COWD board officials made a then ‘triumphant return’ of sorts to the office following their replacement by interim officials on orders of the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA).
I always thought then as I do now that the LWUA takeover was bound to happen after President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr opened that possibility in a speech he gave to Kagay-anons during a visit to the city a few months back. And it did happen despite the frequent spin and rebuttals to the contrary by the incumbent COWD officials in interviews with local media.
Because try as they might, the then incumbent COWD board of directors and general manager simply cannot entrench themselves in the agency and blissfully ignore or wish away the LWUA appointed officials like they were some bad nightmare or bangungot. They are admittedly going up against the LWUA which took similar action in other water districts, notably the Metropolitan Cebu Water District.
And even with my busy home schedule and keeping up with the ongoing Higalaay Festival activities at the time this piece was being written, I also kept tabs on the COWD situation which resulted in the NBI-Manila office probing the allegations of corruption within the water district and the incumbent officials waving the white flag of surrender and giving way to the interim officials to fully take over the COWD.
Their surrender came about, according to one of the COWD board members Gerry Caño, after the Office of Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) gave their legal opinion that the LWUA takeover was legal and above board. With their only ‘legal’ lifeline to retaining their positions gone, the incumbent COWD board including then manager Young had no choice but to give way.
They could always contest the LWUA takeover in court and I even heard in a radio interview one of the COWD officials openly declaring her defiance to the LWUA takeover as she questioned the agency’s claim of alleged financial irregularities committed during the 2018 to 2022 period. To be fair, the newest batch of COWD officials were appointed in 2022 when a new administration in City Hall took over.
Still, it was galling to learn from LWUA chairman Ronnie Ong about the alleged irregularities in COWD during an interview he had over a major news network. One such questionable practice includes the frequency of board meetings. I cannot recall exactly how many times these meetings were called as Ong said but given that every board meeting guarantees a substantial honoraria per board member, I wonder how many times they do meet and how much are they paid.
Last I checked, every COWD board member is paid at least P10,000 per board meeting back in the early 2000s. Exactly what are they meeting about that’s so important that it didn’t even benefit the COWD but only themselves? As far as I can see, the COWD as the city’s designated water service provider began its descent to abysmal mediocrity during the administration of the late mayor Vicente ‘Dongkoy’ Emano.
VYE’s appointed COWD officials arranged the deal with one bulk water supplier that supposedly didn’t meet government auditing standards. Flash forward to the 2020s and Cagayan de Oro City is stuck with a contract with another major bulk water supplier who charges nearly P4 increase in water rates every four years. That is unless said contract is revoked in court which takes a lot of legal wrangling.
And we’re not even talking about the millions of pesos worth of equipment purchased from a government funded loan back in 2017 (?) that were reportedly abandoned to waste in one of the city’s warehouses. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they are losing millions of pesos in non-revenue water (NRW) or water that had been wasted due to leakage, illegal connections and what-have-you. And the COWD pipeline network is way long overdue for a top-to-bottom overhaul that cannot be solved overnight.
To make a really long winded and totally atrocious story that is the COWD mercifully short, that water district is a near train wreck of a problem that needs long term solutions that may prove painful but necessary to the public. I’m no expert but a problem that has long been festering like a bulging skin boil like the COWD needs an operation, not just a casual pinch and poking of the offending boil.
It doesn’t take a genius to know the interim COWD officials will not solve the COWD’s problems overnight. The only small consolation to the public is that at least in the foreseeable future, there won’t be a cutoff of water supply as what happened sometime this year by the Cagayan de Oro Bulk Water Inc. (COBI), now the designated bulk water supplier of the city.
As we near the last quarter of 2024, what can be done now is to look for other bulk water suppliers for Cagayan de Oro City since the contract between COWD and COBI is as far as I see not exclusive. Bluntly speaking, COBI is only after payments and it remains to be seen if they do live up to their contractual obligations to improve water service to the Kagay-anons.
But then signing up COBI as a bulk water supplier was resorted to by the previous administration of former mayor Oscar Moreno after the Commission on Audit (COA) issued adverse rulings over City Hall’s continued payments of its first supplier, Rio Verde Water Consortium Inc., after Rio Verde failed to qualify as a bidder under COA rules.
And admittedly, the contract with COBI did pass review by both the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and the OGCC. For now, what matters to the public is that they have stable water supply and screw whatever politics or ulterior motives are endangering that continuity of water service, however far from ideal it is.
